Since the early 1990's, the number of people using the World Wide Web has grown at a substantial rate. As more users take advantage of the World Wide Web, higher volumes of traffic are generated over the Internet. Because the benefits of commercializing the Internet to take advantage of these higher traffic volumes can be tremendous, businesses increasingly seek means to advertise their products or services on-line. These advertisements may appear, for example, in the form of leased advertising space (e.g., “banners”) on websites or as advertisements presented to digital television users, which are comparable to rented billboard space or to commercials broadcasted during television or radio programs.
When a company advertises on a website, it may benefit from the volume of advertisements or impressions that it places on the website, the number of users that select or “click” on each advertisement, and the number of sales or other “conversions” that result from each display of an advertisement. Each instance that an advertisement is placed on a web page may be referred to as an “impression.” Companies may pay per impression, per click, and/or per conversion, regardless of whether or not the action for which they are paying (e.g., impressions, clicks, etc.) is the action that benefits them. Therefore, in addition to wanting to predict impressions, clicks, and conversions, a company may want to determine a bid price, which represents the highest price that the company is willing to pay for placing an advertisement on a website. The determination of a bid price may help companies, and those obtaining advertising space on their behalf, to assess the potential benefit of placing a particular advertisement on a particular web page. Accordingly, companies have a need to determine bid prices for placing advertisements on web pages.
It is accordingly an object to overcome the shortcomings of current techniques for pricing bids.